All My Fault
by supersmileys
Summary: Inspired by the latest Season 3 promotional trailer, the brothers have a plan to fix the massive dilemma that they face. But they don't understand exactly how dangerous messing with life and death can be. Spoilers for the end of Season 2, and also for the Season 3 promo trailer.


**A/N: ANOTHER SPOILER WARNING! This is based on a few lines from the Season 3 promotional trailer, and then I guessed where it might end up, so if you don't want to be spoiled, please don't proceed.**

**And sorry.**

* * *

"Are you sure about this?" Anders asked nervously. Mike nodded encouragingly.  
"Yes. We'll be right here. Plus, YOU'RE the one who wants to do this!"  
"Yeah, for the good of the family, but…it's a bit of a dangerous way to go about it, don't you think?"

"Now's not a good time to start having doubts, dwarf," Michele said. Anders glared at her.  
"Mike, can you tell your woman to shut her trap?" Michele laughed derisively, and Mike shook his head.  
"No, she's right, Anders. You can't back out, now. He's nearly here." There was a sound of a car pulling up, and Anders shifted on his feet, trying to shake his nerves. He was not comforted by the fact that even Michele gripped the Yggdrasil a little more tightly at the sound of Axl approaching. They heard Axl's car door slam, and the three of them jumped at the massive _BANG _of the door swinging open. It was a few seconds before the light properly hit Axl, and at first they could only see his tall silhouette taking up the entire doorframe.

Axl's face looked as though it hadn't seen a smile in years. It was sallow, and he had dark circles under his eyes. He also looked as though he had forgotten the meaning of the word 'razor'. Axl's eyes menacingly scanned the room over his oldest brother and Michele until they landed on Anders.

"What the fuck does he want?" growled Axl at the sight of Anders. The pair hadn't spoken properly since Gaia's goddess ceremony; Axl had made it clear that Anders was dead to him, even though it wasn't Anders fault.

"Axl…I have something to tell you." Anders couldn't hide the fear in his voice. This was the most idiotic thing he had done in his entire life, and it was hard for him to remember the reason _why _he was doing something this stupid. He was at the point where he was envying Ty – he had it so much easier, to just drink something and then only have to rely on the goddesses to sort it out while he passed out (not that trusting the goddesses was something that he was completely okay with). This plan, however, was certifiably INSANE.

"You know how I tried to tell you that nothing would ever happen between me and Gaia?" Axl knew. Anders had been insufferable trying to get in contact with Axl, but he wasn't having a bar of it. It didn't matter what Anders claimed, because he was Bragi. God of talking bullshit. Who was destined to fall in love with Gaia. Idunn. Nothing that Anders said could change that.

"Upstairs." was Axl's reply. Anders flicked a fearful glance to his older brother. He didn't exactly want to be left alone with Axl, who hadn't been himself in a long time. Mike gave Anders the smallest nod. Fuck. Anders couldn't believe that Mike was okay with this. But before he could suggest another option, Axl picked Anders up by the scruff of his neck and took him upstairs. His strength had been increasing, and the ease of which he could lift his older brother was terrifying. Michele normally wasn't afraid of anything, and she inched closer to Mike as they waited for the point in which she could jump in with the Yggdrasil.

Where the fuck were Ty and Olaf? Mike was starting to think that they really were going to need back up. It was a few what seemed like eternally long minutes before they slipped in the door, waiting for their assistance to be required.  
The silence from upstairs was petrifying. For all the brothers knew, Axl could be strangling Anders and they'd not have a clue. Perhaps this wasn't such a good idea after all.  
"AXL?!" Mike yelled. He couldn't believe that he had thought this was a good idea. Anders could truly die from angering Axl in his state, and he didn't want to be the one responsible for one of his brothers murdering the other.

Anders came crashing down through the ceiling as Axl had thrown him through the wooden floor. He seemed relatively okay, despite the fall, but they weren't comforted for long as Axl jumped through the hole in the ceiling to their level. He stepped over to Anders, who was still lying on the floor, grimacing in pain. Olaf and Ty let out a laugh. The fall through the roof was pretty comical, given the circumstances. But Axl's tone soon shut them up.  
"Spit it out, _Bragi,_" Axl sneered. Anders couldn't believe that his own brother had done such a thing, and he couldn't be arsed tiptoeing around his brother's feelings anymore.

"I fucked her, Axl. Gaia came over, and I invited her in, and then I screwed her brains out." He didn't even care that he was lying anymore. Anders climbed to his feet slowly so he could face his brother. Axl's face was unreadable.

"Say that again." His voice was quiet, and the rest of the room matched him, not daring to breathe. Anders, however, exhaled purposefully and opened his mouth to speak.

"Not a good idea, Anders," murmured a voice, which Anders ignored. They were this far, he may as well get the job done.

"I said, I fucked her. When she came in, I didn't have to check with her, we just went for it. We did it multiple times all over the house. And what's more, she loved it. She _begged _me to do it to her, and boy, did I-" and Anders had reached his brother's breaking point. Axl let out a roar of fury and lifted his brother up and thrust him across the room, where Anders landed on a pile of rubble.

Olaf and Ty went over to help Anders up, and Mike was getting increasingly uncomfortable with the situation. Axl was making moves to make another attack on Anders, and it was starting to get very dangerous. Anders rubbed his jaw; the shock and the adrenaline from Axl's attack had prevented him from feeling any pain.

"Shit, Anders!" Ty had noticed a red patch at the collar of Anders' shirt that was growing at an alarming rate. Anders looked down, and noticed there was a piece of wood embedded at the part of his body where his shoulder met his neck. Anders groaned and dropped to his knees. He was starting to feel a bit faint.

"Uh-oh," said a small voice – Michele. She was the LAST person Mike wanted to hear utter such words. Anders blinked groggily for a few seconds, and then he finally collapsed to the floor, the blood leaching from his neck.

"Anders?" The shock of seeing his brother fall unconscious like that had stopped Odin from ruling Axl's body, and instead it was a scared little brother who spoke Ander's name.  
"Olaf, take Axl and go!" Mike shouted, as he and Michele rushed to Anders' side. Olaf and Ty grabbed Axl by an arm each and carried him out.

"No, wait, please! I'm sorry, I'm so sorry!" Axl cried. But he allowed Ty and Olaf to remove him from the building.

"Fuck, he's losing blood fast," Michele muttered, as she scrambled around, looking for something to stem the blood flow. She reached over and tugged at Mike, who quickly shed his garment and handed it to her.  
"Can't you take the wood out and then use the Yggdrasil?!" Mike asked, panicking.

"No, it's punctured an artery. If I remove that now, he'll bleed straight out. Plus, the location of it means that I risk doing severe nerve damage." She leaned over and tapped Anders' face.

"Anders? Anders, can you hear me?" Anders opened his eyes; they were pale and unfocused.  
"Anders, I need you to stay with me, alright? Call an ambulance!" she barked at Mike, who gratefully jumped at the chance for something helpful to do.

"What the fuck are you doing? Why haven't you used the Yggdrasil?!" Ty had entered back in the room. Olaf was staying outside with Axl, to keep an eye on him and make sure Odin didn't come back and make matters worse than they were.

"It's not that simple!" Michele shouted back, and her voice was shaking. Ty rushed over to his brother's side and shoved Michele out of the way and pressed down on the shirt stemming the bleeding from Anders' neck. There was so much more blood than from when Eva died, and Ty wanted to vomit, but the thought of his brother dying right there prevailed over his nausea and he determinedly pressed the shirt to Anders' neck.

"What do you mean?! Can't you just use it now?" Ty's voice was higher pitched than it had ever been – not even Dawn's near death experiences compared to the sheer terror of the situation.

"He needs to be on the verge of death, and the blood is making it hard to pinpoint whether or not he is!"

"NO! Just heal him! Forget all the losing the god powers shit, and just make him better!"

"I'd need to take the thing out of his neck, and there's no way I can do that without him potentially haemorrhaging and then bleeding straight to death!" When Michele had first decided that she was going to go to medical school, this was not the scenario she had imagined ever taking part in. If Anders died right here, right now, this would be all her fault.

"What are you shouting about?" Anders mumbled. He couldn't see anything, but he could hear the voices of Michele and Ty. Ty turned to look down at his brother.  
"We're just trying to keep you awake. Can you do that for us, mate?" Mike's shirt was quickly becoming useless to stem the blood, so Ty shed his own and quickly replaced it with Mike's to keep the blood at bay; although it seemed fruitless. Why did this have to happen? Why did he have to suggest becoming mortal as a way of fixing the rift between Anders and Axl? He had had no idea how dangerous it could be. This was all his fault.

"Where's that ambulance, Mike?" Michele called urgently over to Mike. He was pacing the room with his cellphone.  
"There's no fucking service out here!" he cursed. Of course they had decided to implement this plan in the middle of a remote part of Central Hawkes Bay. Mike was kicking himself over and over for agreeing to go along with the stupid plan. He KNEW that it was a stupid idea this switching to mortality business when Ty had done it, and yet he had allowed ANOTHER brother to attempt the same thing. This was all his fault.

"Well, you need to hurry up and GET service, unless you want your brother to die!" Michele snapped. Mike went outside to try and get reception, and Michele went after him to try with her phone.

* * *

Axl and Olaf were out the back of the building, and Axl was completely beside himself.  
"Is he going to be okay, Olaf?" Axl's tone was pleading, and it was the first ounce of proper humanity that anyone had heard from him in quite a while. Olaf should have known that Axl could do some serious damage when angered like that. He should have warned his grandsons of the danger that this could have, especially when the tree didn't always work when goddesses couldn't focus entirely on their powers in times of duress. Like now. This was all his fault.

"Olaf? Please? Can they fix him with the tree thing?" When Olaf hadn't answered the first time, Axl asked again more desperately. He shouldn't have gotten so angry. He hadn't meant to injure Anders like that. Sure, he HAD meant to hurt him for the things that Anders said, but to nearly kill him…no. No. He was done with all this god shit. Why did HE have to be the one to be Odin? Why couldn't he have been a more docile god? This whole stupid quest, this god business, this EVERYTHING. Was all his fault.

Olaf looked up at his grandson gravely.  
"Maybe not."

* * *

Anders felt light. Not as light as a feather, because that would be physically impossible, but light enough that he felt as though all his worries were lifted. There wasn't much he could do, anyway, so why worry? Even though it was all his fault.

This was the end, right? It seemed so peaceful. He didn't know why he had doubted that this mortality business would calm everything down and make it all better. Things would be fine for him, but he had to make sure that he did what he had set out to do, and make sure his brothers were okay. One last time, he'd use his Bragi powers. For good. It was probably cleaner and easier that he wasn't brought back by the Yggdrasil. He couldn't risk still being Bragi and continue to tear his family into ruin.

"Ty…" This was going to take every ounce of energy and oxygen and blood that Anders had left in his body. Ty looked down at his brother's face – they shared the same icy blue eyes, except Ty's were filled with tears.  
"Ty, you have been one of the best brothers a guy could have. You are a better person than I ever could have hoped to be. And so that's why I want you to do something for me. You should tell Axl that I'm sorry; that I never slept with Gaia and that I never meant to hurt him. Tell Mike thanks. And that his happiness should depend on himself only, not anyone else. You need to keep at the quest for Frigg. And Ty. This is the most important thing of them all…" Anders was running out of air and consciousness, but Bragi needed to get his message across.

"Ty, I want you to let go."

As a mortal, Ty couldn't refuse. He was crying as he nodded, and eased his grip from the shirt on Anders' neck. For the second time in Ty's life, he watched as the god spirit departed from its mortal vessel – it was just as beautiful as Eva's, except this time the spirit of Bragi was a beautiful array of golds and reds. Once the spirit had disappeared entirely, Ty realised what his brother had just done to make him let go, and he couldn't take it. He collapsed over his brother's body, sobbing, just as Michele and Mike rushed in triumphantly.

"An ambulance is on its way!" Mike shouted, and then he saw Ty and Anders and his face dropped.  
"No. No, no, _NO_!" That last 'no' was so loud and anguished that Olaf and Axl heard and came running in.

Axl and Olaf each let out their own "NO!"s as they saw the sight of Mike and Ty at Anders' side. Michele was standing back slightly, tears pouring down her face. She had lead them to hope that it would all be okay, that she would be able to bring him back! This was all her fault.

Another descendant of Olaf's that he had to watch die. He had never hated being a god more. If he hadn't been Baldr, he may never have fathered their father, and this never would have happened. He didn't want to be a god anymore. This was all his fault.

Mike failed. He failed to be careful, to look after his little brother, to have the sense to see when his family was in danger! He had thought that their plan to turn Anders mortal was like a game – if they played their cards right, then they would win. Because he was Ullr. But this was no game. This was his brother's life. He had treated his brother's life like a stupid game. He didn't deserve to be a god anymore. This was all his fault.

Axl was done. Well and truly done. He had been sick of being Odin when it had meant that it interfered with his love life, but the strong emotions and feelings he had had about Gaia, Eva, all of that paled in comparison to the pain of watching his brother die at his hand. Axl couldn't deal with being Odin anymore. Not when this was all his fault.

Ty couldn't believe it. He had thought being mortal would SOLVE their god problems! But it hadn't done anything good, except fulfilling his own selfish desires. What it had done was split the family in half, wipe the memories of so many good people that he had cared for and loved, and finally. It had meant that Anders could talk his own brother into letting him die. If Ty hadn't been mortal, he wouldn't have let go. Not ever. This was all his fault.


End file.
